by Zoe Dawson
He lifted his head and looked at her, a smile appearing in his eyes. “Hello, Sleeping Beauty. About time you woke up.”
She hunched her shoulders and tightened her arms in front of her. “Wasn’t it your job to wake me with a kiss, Prince Slacker?”
The glint in his eyes intensified. “Someone got up on the wrong side of the couch.”
“You’re so cute and clever, aren’t you?”
He watched her as she sat down adjacent to him, clearly amused by her irritability. “I so am. I’m thinking of changing my name to Cute and Clever Beck. What do you think?”
She pushed his shoulder, and he got up and went to the counter and poured another cup of coffee. He sat down again and went back to his screen. She didn’t want to be ignored. But she didn’t want to talk either, so she settled for coffee. She couldn’t remember ever being so contrary. Maybe she was just losing it.
She sipped her way through a cup of coffee, then drew up her knees and rested her cheek on them, her mind adrift, still more asleep than awake. She focused on Austin.
“You need a haircut.”
He ignored her.
“And a shave.”
“You’re pushing your luck, babe.”
That made her smile. “What are you cooking for dinner?”
He raised his head and responded with a long, steady stare.
She held his gaze, smiling at him. “I cooked spaghetti. It’s your turn.”
“We’re taking turns, are we?”
“You’re living here.”
Studying her with a mixture of tolerance and amusement, he rocked back in his chair and hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans. “Temporarily.”
It caught her off guard. The jolt of pain went right through her heart. She didn’t want to be reminded about what it would be like when he was gone. It hurt too much.
Austin’s eyes narrowed a fraction, and he stared at her, his gaze suddenly dark and serious. He leaned forward and rested his arms on the table. “Are you ready to talk to me?” he asked.
Jenna stared at him, a feeling of apprehension unfolding in her belly. Then he reached across the table and caught her by the wrist, silently urging her to her feet. He didn’t say anything as they stood there, staring at each other as if they were going to take their last breaths.
When his laptop chimed that he had an incoming call, he answered. It wasn’t Drea, but his boss.
“How is it going? I haven’t heard from you in two days.” The sound of her voice over the computer speakers was loud and her words were concise.
“That’s because I have nothing to report. I’m working on doing up a profile of Mitch Campbell, the next-door neighbor, and waiting for the ballistics report and any other forensic evidence I can go on from the El Centro Police Department.” He was staring at the screen, but Jenna could tell his attention was on her.
“Do you want me to light a fire under them? I can have the director call them.”
“No, they’re working on it. It’s just time-consuming.”
“Austin. I really need you back here. You have to wrap this up in the next few days. Don’t let me down. I’m up to my eyeballs in cases.” That made the jolt that went through her feel ten times worse. Kai was pressuring him to come back, and Jenna wasn’t ready. Jenna was just about to tell him that she was still working it out in her head. She didn’t have any answers yet.
“I need to make sure that Jenna is safe,” he said, looking at her then, his eyes full of defiance.
“I understand,” Kai said, her voice getting softer and gentler. Jenna figured she would like this woman a lot. “But she isn’t your only priority, and there’s been no overt threat to her in a week. We just had a former suspect shot. Hit this harder.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, his voice anything but cordial. Kai didn’t respond, just disconnected the call.
“She really wants you back,” Jenna said, her voice subdued.
“Yeah,” he said. “She’s pushing hard for my return.”
“I’m sure she values you very much, Austin. I’m sorry this is such a frustrating case.”
He turned to her and there must have been something of her inner turmoil and guilt in her eyes because he went to her, pulling her into his arms. “This isn’t your fault,” he whispered. “Whoever is behind it is at fault. I’m not going to leave you alone to fend for yourself against a killer, Jenna.”
She nodded, then looked up at him. Her eyes told him what she was thinking. Would he leave her alone after this was over if she asked him to? Would he walk away if she decided that’s what she needed to be the independent woman she'd never been given the chance to be? His cell rang and he answered. She could hear Jack’s deep voice.
Austin’s face hardened. He looked at her. “He has the warrant for Campbell’s place. He’s on his way.”
Jenna nodded.
“After I leave, lock the door and don’t open it for anyone but me,” he said, pulling out his gun, and Jenna’s heart jumped into overdrive.
“Be careful.”
“I will,” he said.
Jenna, feeling her face draining of color, followed him to the door. But she couldn’t seem to turn the lock. Instead, she opened the door a crack. Austin walked over to Mitch’s apartment. She only had to wait a short time for Jack, who came through the door to the complex with two uniforms. Jack walked up to the door and nodded to Austin. He knocked on the door. “Mr. Campbell, this is Detective Morton with the El Centro Police Department. Open the door.”
No answer and no movement in the apartment.
“Mr. Campbell, open the door. I have a warrant and am prepared to break down the door if you don’t comply.”
Still no answer. Finally, Jack nodded to the officer with the door breacher. He swung the tool against the door, and it banged open. Jack and Austin moved inside with purpose, their guns drawn and ready.
Jenna was consumed with curiosity, and she couldn’t stop herself as she opened the door and crossed the hall into Mitch’s apartment. Had he been the man who’d killed her cousin? She wanted to face him. She saw Austin, Jack, and the two uniforms drop their weapons as they entered a back bedroom. Jenna entered the room, her hand flying to her mouth. On the floor before a closet lay Mitch Campbell, a gunshot to the head, a pillow, and a gun next to him.
But it wasn’t Campbell’s body that Jenna was staring at. It was the open closet door where every possible surface was covered with pictures of…her.
Chapter Sixteen
It was over. The man who killed Sarah was now dead and there was nothing left but the mopping up. She was once again in the background while people filled her apartment and moved in and out of Mitch’s. Austin and Jack talked quietly together, but she heard bits and pieces, especially how the gun matched the firearm that had killed Billy and the pictures plastered all over the wall showed that her neighbor, kind, hardworking, and gentle Mitch Campbell, had been stalking her. The eagle necklace that Sarah had been wearing was found among his possessions. His suicide note said it all. Forgive me. I love you.
How could he have loved her? He didn’t know her except for the occasional greeting, borrowing a cup of sugar or helping her unload her groceries. She’d seen Mitch and Tina together, and he had been so affectionate with her. It seemed so surreal to Jenna, who hadn’t spoken to him about anything important. But the word erotomania was bandied about by Detective Morgan; Mitch had apparently been determined to maintain the delusion that she was in love with him even though they were strangers.
Feeling dull, having had no sleep since his body had been discovered, Jenna stared out at the wispy clouds on the western horizon still undercoated with slate gray, while the eastern ones were burnished with orange, gold, and deep blushing coral. Soft purple wisps trailed out behind those clouds like the wake of a boat, painting the sky with slashes of color. On most mornings like this, she felt like if she could take a deep enough breath, she would be able to absorb all the colors, all the open-sky
beauty. She would miss the wide-open spaces of the desert that possessed their own dry, dusty beauty.
She opened the back door and stepped outside. The air was heavy, as if the Santa Anas were gathering for one last buzzy episode before they finally moved off. She wrapped her arms around herself as she slipped through the gate and started walking out into the open area behind the complex, an uneasiness dogging her footsteps.
She wasn’t sure if it was because she’d made up her mind about what she had to do, the best choice for her own personal growth. Her discovery that she had “let” people take care of her galvanized her to face the truth. She had to stand on her own two feet without someone in her life paving the way or making it easier. Her throat tightened.
That included Austin.
It included accepting confrontation and saying no. It included making her own plans and decisions. It meant going back to DC, burying her cousin and deciding for the first time in her life what she was going to do with it.
“Babe?”
She turned from the spectacular sunrise to the sight of a spectacular man. The wind tossed his unique hair around, the color of his eyes matching the slate gray on the underbellies of the clouds. He looked tired and just as uneasy as she felt. It had to be because this was it. What he had told her he was waiting for. Her moment to talk about them.
Shivering in the glow of light and the hot blast of the wind, she closed her eyes. This cold had nothing to do with the external and everything to do with her internal revelations. She was going to leave Austin voluntarily after she had been the one to coerce him into a relationship he’d fought against for professional and personal reasons. Ever the guardian, ever the protector who looked out for the weak and downtrodden. A man to die for.
Her feelings for him were incomprehensible, jumbled, locked somewhere deep inside her for fear that if she let herself feel them now, she would be right back where she started, letting a man take care of her, losing herself all over again. She climbed onto a picnic table, sitting on the surface and bracing her feet on the seat.
“You’re going back to DC.” He looked away. “When?”
“Tomorrow. I’ve already booked my flight.” There was silence. “Please don’t be angry about it.”
“Angry? I’m not angry, Jenna. Why would you think that?”
“Because that’s what happens when I want to do something that doesn’t fit with people’s plans. They get angry.”
“You have to do what is the best thing for you. I would never hold that against you. Am I disappointed that you’re not staying, that you don’t want to discuss a future with me? Damn right. But I’m not going to hold that against you. You are in control of your own life.”
“I just have to find out for myself. I need to plan this funeral without your help or anyone else’s. Sarah died because of me. I owe her that at least.”
He looked uncomfortable for a moment. “Jenna, she died because someone killed her in your place. That doesn’t make you responsible.”
“I feel responsible.”
He nodded. “I get that.”
Feeling as if she were too close to a precipice, his tone set off warning bells. Tension was radiating off him, and Jenna’s insides shrank into a hard, cold knot. Experiencing an almost strangling sensation of dread unfolding in her, she clenched her arms around her knees and watched him, every muscle in her body braced for a blow. “Someone? Don’t you mean Mitch?”
He looked away, and his posture told her that he’d been disagreeing with his boss and he hadn’t won the argument. “I don’t like the way this panned out, and Campbell? He had no evidence of any symptoms of a disorder. I’m not convinced, but I’m told that the disease can manifest in a man in his late twenties. He could have been developing schizophrenia and it hadn’t fully surfaced yet. I’m just not convinced. But I’ve been overruled and with the damning evidence, my words are falling on deaf ears.”
Unsettled, she shivered against a sudden internal chill. “He had Sarah’s necklace. The one she was wearing that night.”
He remained immobile for a second, then he made a small, abrupt gesture with his hand. “Yeah, he did. Why did he keep it if it was you he focused on? He may have gotten the tickets, made the phone call to get Sarah out of the house, but why were the lights off? Why did he kill her if he thought it was you? Schizophrenics are not usually violent. The suicide, I can understand, stemming from his unrequited love. But he never approached you, and I can’t see him locking you inside the library. Other than the head wound, there were no other marks on him. You said you stabbed your attacker.” It was obvious he had more questions that didn’t have answers. But she figured in this type of bizarre case maybe they would never know all the answers. He shrugged. “I could be wrong.” He looked out to the brightening sky. “It doesn’t matter. Kai wants me back at Pendleton tomorrow.”
The heaviness in Jenna’s chest increased as dread settled in, and she felt as if she were at the edge of a deep dark hole. “That means you’re leaving…tonight?”
Jenna could feel the reluctance in him across the gap that separated them. When he finally answered her, his voice was barely audible. “Yes. I need to stay to wrap this up, but once that’s done, I’ll be heading out. We can have dinner together before I go.”
This was what she wanted, what she had to do. “Okay, you’re cooking.”
He chuckled, then sobered. “All right. Agreed.” They stared at each other with the full knowledge that hours from now they would be saying goodbye.
Feeling as if every bit of warmth had been sucked out of her, she lifted her head and looked at him, her stomach in knots. He was standing as he was before, but he was so focused on her; his body language was painful to see and so was the ache in his eyes. His face was like stone. But what wrenched at her heart was that beneath that rigidly controlled surface, she saw his absolute commitment to her. Just like at the embassy. Experiencing such a rush of feeling for that man, and for the man he had become, Jenna slipped from the picnic table and crossed to him. Her throat so full she didn’t dare unlock her jaws, she put her arms around him, pulling his head against her shoulder, easing in a careful, constricted breath so he wouldn’t know she was so close to tears.
For an instant he simply stood there in her arms, then he let his breath go and put his arms around her. Jenna closed her eyes and cradled his head against her, blinking furiously.
Jenna swallowed hard, struggling to achieve a degree of self-control, an outward calm. “I don’t like Brussels sprouts.”
Through the turmoil in his eyes, a tiny glimmer of humor appeared. “Oh, that’s too bad. That’s exactly what I was making.”
“Beck!” Jack called from the back door and he turned.
He dropped his arms and stepped back. Reaching out, he snagged a curl, wrapping it around his finger, his expression drawn. He shook his head and let the curl go. “Duty calls, babe. I’ll see you later.”
Refusing to give in to the churning inside her, she smoothed down his shirt, then stepped back and let him go.
After a few more minutes, she went back into the apartment. Even before she entered, she knew it was empty. She found a note from Austin on the counter, saying he’d gone to the precinct and that he’d be back later on.
She listlessly slid the note into a slot by the telephone, then headed toward the bedroom, rolling her head to ease the tension in her shoulders. Time to get some sleep. She had to get packed up tonight and get ready to leave. She supposed since Sarah was deceased, so was the lease, but the rent had been paid up to the last day of next month. She contacted the power company and put in an order to cancel service; cable was part of the rent, so she just had to schedule the cancelation of phone service. The last thing she did was go online to cancel forwarding her mail. She picked up her cell phone and called the super. When he answered, she said, “Scott, I’m leaving tomorrow, but I will be back to pack up and take care of all Sarah’s things.”
“Now that everything is
settled, you heading back home?”
“Yes, Austin is leaving tonight, and I’ll be out tomorrow morning. I’ll keep the key until I handle everything in the apartment.”
“The rent is paid up until next month, so you’re good. Have a safe trip.”
“Thank you.” She hung up and got up and pulled her two suitcases and carry-on out of the closet. One was large, the other midsized. But the thought of packing made her even more tired. She went and brushed her teeth and then lay down, dropping into sleep.
The feel of someone pulling the comforter up around her woke her, and she tried to swim through the gray weight of unconsciousness, her mind thick with sleep. It vaguely registered that she was huddled in bed with her hands under her face, trying to ward off the chill, her oversize T-shirt twisted up around her waist. Feeling as if she weighed a ton, she slowly opened her eyes, her body so heavy she couldn’t move. Austin was sitting on the bed beside her, his hand on her shoulder, gazing down at her. “I’m sorry I woke you. You looked cold.”
She stared at him, feeling almost drugged. “I was.” She rubbed her hand over her face. “What time is it?”
“Only two. I need a little nap myself. Shove over.”
She made room for him and he pulled the comforter over both of them. He turned to face her. He stared into her face, as if he was memorizing her features, and her heart did a funny little catch in her chest. He took a ragged breath and pulled her against him, burying his face in her neck. She felt raw and desperate at the way he held her with such absolute tenderness, and it made her throat close up all over again. He could turn her inside out, and God, how she… Oh God, oh God, oh God…she couldn’t say the word to herself because if she did there would be no leaving him. And she had to go. Had to do this on her own.
His gazed fixed on her, he continued to stare at her, his gray eyes now a somber dark charcoal. The expression in his eyes softened, got warmer and more intimate. “I’m going to miss this…and you, babe.”
